That's pretty much the same way I had to do it "way back in the day" . . . in 1969 on an IBM 1130 with a 2310 disk drive using a 2315 "pizza box" removable disk about 14 inches in diameter. Sadly, the LCD had yet to be invented, so the output was to an 1132 chain printer.Way back in the day, before I had PBP and used to do nothing but assembly work (before I knew what I was doing really) on the PIC and needed to count large numbers to display on an LCD, I'd break the bytes up into BCD, and work with them that way. I could deal with virtually any size number that way, limited only by the amount of ram on the PIC.
An exercise in making larger numbers out of much smaller numbers was in June and July, 1967, when I was calculating the values, determining the periods ("rings"), and counting the digit distributions in repeating decimal fractions of the form 1/(10x-1) on a Philco 2000. For x=1, 1/9 is easy, 0.1111 . . . But for x=2, 1/19, the fraction is 0.052631578947368421 before it repeats, beginning again with "0526 . . . " (18-digit period or "ring") and going on, forever repeating. For x=3, 1/29, the procedure is the same, and so on. The objective was to create an algorithm for generating random numbers.. . . it's obvious to me that, while you might know how to make larger numbers out of a bunch of smaller numbers, didn't get what I was getting at the most basic . . .
The actual math is all whole numbers, no fractions, and . . . well, I'll let skimask explain how to do it.
I have in fact learned as much as I think I have . . . but I haven't learned nearly as much as I want to know!If a person takes that example in the negative fashion, then just maybe that person hasn't learned as much as they thought they have.
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